£500 - £600 Budget - System Advice

sd11

sd11

sd11

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23 Mar 2013
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14
Hi, I'm looking to put together a strong system for my work in design (print & web) and development (web).

Photoshop, Indesign, XAMPP, movies and music are the main things I'll use it for - and it needs to run two HDMI monitors - but I'm going to see how the onboard graphics handle those before getting a dedicated graphics card.

Does anyone have any thoughts? Is my power supply good enough? Or could I get away with a cheaper one?

Does my MB suit my processor? Etc. As always, I really appreciate your advice.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Samsung 128GB SSD 840 PRO SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7PD128BW) £106.99
1 x AMD A10-5800K Black Edition 3.80GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Quad Core Processor (AD580KWOHJBOX) £99.95
1 x BitFenix Prodigy M MATX Cube Case - Arctic White £74.95
1 x Asus F2A55-M AMD A55 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £67.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £65.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance Low Profile 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory Kit - GREEN £65.99
1 x Antec Neo Eco C 450w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £53.99
Total : £556.37 (includes shipping : £17.10).

 
APU's need fast RAM such as 2133Mhz as the IGP relies on it to perform well, the A55 chipset boards lacks SATAIII and USB3.0 (although I see that Asus has an extra 3rd party chip to give two USB3.0 ports) and you can not overclock with it either.


Heres is an alternative build,

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7850 OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Cards £119.99
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-6 Six Core 6300 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £89.99
1 x Toshiba SSD HG5D Series THNSNH 7mm 128GB Solid State Hard Drive - (THNSNH128GCST) £79.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £65.99
1 x Gigabyte 970A-DS3P AMD 970A (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £53.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L8 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan Built in £53.99
1 x Patriot Intel Extreme Masters 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVI38G160C9K) £53.99
1 x NZXT Source 210 Elite Midi Tower Case - Black £39.95
Total : £578.39 (includes shipping : £17.10).



So much faster.
 
stulid said:
APU's need fast RAM such as 2133Mhz as the IGP relies on it to perform well, the A55 chipset boards lacks SATAIII and USB3.0 (although I see that Asus has a n extra 3rd party chip to give two USB3.0 ports) and you can not overclock with it either....
Click to expand...

Hi and thank you for your reply.

I won't be overclocking (I doubt), although you never know.

One thing is I did like the case I chose (vanity, i know). Is there a decent micro or mini atx MB which would go with your suggested set up?

Thanks
 
There are no good mATX boards for these FX chips.

Heres an itx build,

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD A10-5800K Black Edition 3.80GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Quad Core Processor (AD580KWOHJBOX) £99.95
1 x Gigabyte F2A85XN-WIFI AMD A85X Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Mini ITX Motherboard £86.99
1 x Toshiba SSD HG5D Series THNSNH 7mm 128GB Solid State Hard Drive - (THNSNH128GCST) £79.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy Mini-ITX Cube Case - Arctic White £69.95
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L8 530W '80 Plus Bronze' Modular Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan Built in £65.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £65.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan ORANGE 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLAD38G2400HC11CDC01) £59.99
Total : £548.76 (includes shipping : £16.60).

 
I would say thats a good setup.

• A85 chipset so you have SATAIII+USB3.0 and some overclocking.
• Modular PSU a bit like you had before, handy in a small case.
• Fast RAM

The WiFi+bluetooth is,

Features Atheros Dual Band 802.11 a/b/g/n 300Mbps + BLUTETOOTH 4.0 wireless solution
Click to expand...
 
stulid said:
I would say thats a good setup.

• A85 chipset so you have SATAIII+USB3.0 and some overclocking.
• Modular PSU a bit like you had before, handy in a small case.
• Fast RAM

The WiFi+bluetooth is,
Click to expand...

Thanks for your help Stulid - appreciate your patience.

Cheers
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £185.99
1 x MSI Z87I Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ITX Motherboard £104.99
1 x Toshiba SSD HG5D Series THNSNH 7mm 128GB Solid State Hard Drive - (THNSNH128GCST) £79.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy 'Yin' Mini-ITX Cube Case - White/Black £69.95
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLD38G2400HC11CDC01) £59.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L8 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan Built in £53.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £45.95
Total : £612.84 (includes shipping : £10.00).



This Prodigy has a mesh front so will have better airflow. The Phenom has poor venting at the front, watch some video reviews of the case and you'll see what I mean.

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £185.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87M-D3H Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £95.99
1 x Toshiba SSD HG5D Series THNSNH 7mm 128GB Solid State Hard Drive - (THNSNH128GCST) £79.99
1 x BitFenix Prodigy M 'Yin' MATX Cube Case - White/Black £74.95
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan GOLD 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLYD38G2400HC11CDC01) £59.99
1 x BeQuiet Pure Power L8 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply - With 120mm Silent Wing Fan Built in £53.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £45.95
Total : £609.44 (includes shipping : £10.50).



I'm not really a fan of the layout in the mATX version but using a larger mobo with more DIMM slots makes it easier to add more RAM in the future.....it does lose the Wifi and Bluetooth though :(

All the best with it bud, we look forward to seeing what you choose :)
 
honosuseri said:
All the best with it bud, we look forward to seeing what you choose :)
Click to expand...

The problem is I always need to ask questions but then the answers always give me something else to think about!

Thanks for your basket - will check it out now :)

Obviously a big increase in your basket is the Intel chip - I've never had AMD but was willing to give them a go. You're not a fan?
 
Last edited:
Swear if you sacrifice the case size then the spec in post#2 is ideal.

Many applications provide OpenCL compute acceleration so the 7850 or APU's built-in IGP will speed things up in the order of magnitudes.

I still have the reviewers guide for the APU's on my HDD, just been going through it look at some of the tests and results.

Heres a list of apps that use OpenCL,




Heres another go,

YOUR BASKET
1 x AMD Piledriver FX-8 Eight Core 8320 Black Edition 3.50GHz (Socket AM3+) Processor - Retail £119.99
1 x Asus M5A97 EVO R2.0 AMD 970 (Socket AM3+) DDR3 Motherboard £89.99
1 x Toshiba SSD HG5D Series THNSNH 7mm 128GB Solid State Hard Drive - (THNSNH128GCST) £79.99
1 x MSI HD 7770 GHz Edition 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £71.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £65.99
1 x Seasonic S12II 520W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £59.99
1 x Patriot Intel Extreme Masters 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVI38G160C9K) £53.99
1 x NZXT Source 210 Elite Midi Tower Case - Black £39.95
Total : £603.29 (includes shipping : £17.85).



So thats a 8 thread CPU and still with all the bits an bobs for a quarter ponder with cheese over £600 :D

Add a £25 cooler later on, overclock it and you should get well over 4Ghz.
 
sd11 said:
The problem is I always need to ask questions but then the answers always give me something else to think about!

Thanks for your basket - will check it out now :)

Obviously a big increase in your basket is the Intel chip - I've never had AMD but was willing to give them a go. You're not a fan?
Click to expand...

No worries.

Going small isn't cheap bud. Stulid has shown you can do better for the money if you forget the mini-itx form factor. I don't dislike AMDs APUs at all, they make for a very good all round home PC and the IGP is gaming capable to a degree if you are realistic with the settings.

Let's say the A8K and the A10K (which has a better IGP) are on par with intel i3, trouble is there is no where to go from there to rival the i5 which is why Stulid used the AM3+ socket. The FM2 socket is now a dead end, you'll note there are some FM2+ mobos now which will take the new APUs (Kaveri) which should land early next year.

Yes I had to sacrifice storage capacity but it's cheaper to add more storage than do a CPU and mobo swap, I really don't think the FM2 socket is what you want longterm. Going intel 1150 you still get the IGP, if you go AM3+ then a dedicated GPU must be added.
 
Thank you both your help - I think the smart play is to look at a larger case size then.

Really appreciate your advice.
 
sd11 said:
Thank you both your help - I think the smart play is to look at a larger case size then.

Really appreciate your advice.
Click to expand...

No worrys:)

You get so much for your money by going for one of the AM3 specs it makes sense to get the power over the style.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £185.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £109.99
1 x Toshiba SSD HG5D Series THNSNH 7mm 128GB Solid State Hard Drive - (THNSNH128GCST) £79.99
1 x MSI HD 7770 GHz Edition 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £71.99
1 x Seasonic S12II 520W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £59.99
1 x Patriot Intel Extreme Masters 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVI38G160C9K) £53.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £45.95
1 x NZXT Source 210 Elite Midi Tower Case - Black £39.95
Total : £661.93 (includes shipping : £11.75).



intel variation on stulids last spec tho 1tb hdd rather than the 2tb which is £20 more, can save another £20 by going for

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BU-005-MS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=2574

tho have no idea how the mobo and the free cpu cooler stacks up against the gigabyte d3hp and its free cooler.
 
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